Holding On
by Autumn Moon Fae
Summary: Morgana realizes how numb her dreams and her deeds have made her, and how one day she will completely immune to emotion as well. "She couldn't for the life of her understand why she dreaded that moment." Set mid-s4. Oneshot.


_There is no other way._

Morgana had known it from the very beginning.

She'd been a small child during the Great Purge. She had dreams about people killed for their magic while Uther stood above lecturing. And when reality began to fall in line with her nightmares, matching them scene for scene, the girl didn't know what to do. Didn't know which was worse, her dreams or the world she was living.

She couldn't tell them. When she was young, she thought they'd laugh at her. When she was older, she thought they'd execute her.

She went to Gaius for a sleeping draft. And kept going back for something stronger once the nightmares worked their way around Gaius' tonics and herbs. Those first few, rising out of the haze of Gaius' potions, were not faded around the edges as the dreams before but cold and hard and sharp as glass.

Morgana would meet people one day and see their deaths that night.

When Lancelot came to Camelot, she saw Gwen standing alone in the courtyard where a funeral pyre was burning, a lone sword resting in the flickering flames.

When she protected the Druid boy Mordred, hiding him in her rooms, she saw his body broken on a battlefield, surrounded by blood and broken pennants, a sword glinting coldly in his lifeless hand.

When, one day, she looked out her window into the courtyard and saw Merlin and the newcomer Gwaine coming back from a night at the tavern, she dreamt Gwaine was in the uniform of a knight of Camelot, stepping in front of the knife meant for Arthur.

And there were others. Peasants she brushed past in the marketplace dying from plague that would happen years later. Burning at the stake for 'sorcery'. Starving during a bad winter.

Yes, Morgana's sleep was plagued with horrors. When she was Uther's ward those nightmares kept her awake, huddled in her bed too afraid to close her eyes. But when she was Uther's ward, there was still Gwen. Morgana had always been proud, and she would never admit that Gwen's steady, sweet support was the only thing that made them bearable. Gwen would come in, stoke up the fire and bring her milk or sweet tea. Gwen would stay up with her until she finally went back to sleep hours later.

Morgana was complicated – proud and rebellious, clever and vengeful. She knew it, and she liked it. Guinevere was honest and stood by her conscience. She was simple and sweet as honey. She needed no walls, no mazes of secrets to hide who she truly was. Morgana had envied Gwen for her plain, straightforward servant's life during the day – but during the night, Morgana desperately needed her gentle smiles and proffered shawls.

Morgana had believed that Gwen genuinely cared about her.

Now she lived alone, and the bitter sharpness of the fact that she _was_ alone, that there was no Morgause to share her life with and no Gwen to frighten the shadows away – and that, really, there had never been, stung and cut like a fresh wound that would never heal over.

Oh yes, she had Agravaine, and Helios, and Alator, and various other people that she twisted and manipulated and used to her advantage. But it was very different, because she believed – knew – that they would do the same to her if she ever gave them the chance.

She wouldn't give them the chance.

The dreams about death and suffering and betrayal didn't frighten her anymore. Her own experiences and what she experienced in her dreams had dulled her, like a finger that's been pricked too many times to feel it. And she had gone beyond that, too – it pleased her. To know that people died all the time, just like Morgause did, and others were hurt by it. To know that people were in pain as she had been when Emrys' magic burned her up. To know that people were betrayed, just as she had been poisoned by the boy she thought was her friend.

Yes, it pleased her.

But in her dreams, she never saw Arthur's followers betray him. Not his knights, not Gwen, and not Merlin. Agravaine didn't count – he was her tool and nothing more. But the people who had pledged themselves to Arthur never broke that faith.

So she contented herself knowing that faith would be what brought them down in the end. It was a double edged sword, but _Morgana_ could not feel pain.

Even the dreams where she saw Emrys standing over her, and she reached out a shaking, pleading hand to him and was refused for the vile thing she'd become did not trouble her. Morgana was curled deep inside herself, where nothing could startle her or wake her breath from its peaceful, sleeping pace – no matter how hard she tried to shock herself into horror, into sharp, clear reality.

Those were not the worst.

The worst dreams were of what Morgana secretly longed for. Love. Trust. Unity. Protection. Joy that was clear and bright as birdsong, not mud-dark pleasure that twisted like a knife in your chest until you weren't sure if it could really be called joy at all.

Arthur kissing Gwen. A page boy covering for a kitchen maid who'd broken a gold-rimmed plate. Tristan holding Isolde in the throne room as her last breaths faded.

Gwaine gripping Percival's arm as he said he would stay behind to buy them time. Arthur knighting Lancelot. Leon's face as he smiled, refusing to join her side while faced with immediate death.

These dreams haunted her, brought her down slowly like arrows in the chinks of a suit of armor. But one day Morgana knew that she would be immune to even them, her senses dulled by overuse until she was truly invincible.

She couldn't for the life of her understand why she dreaded that moment.


End file.
